Saturday Night Live this past weekend poked fun at Verizon and the gobbledygook of tech jargon it spews regularly in its ads about 4G, LTE and countless models of smartphones (not that Verizon is the only company guilty of this). The SNL skit, featuring a nonstop sales associate in a Verizon store, is spot on with its depiction of today's wireless technobabble as "an old person's nightmare."

Telecom and other tech companies have become increasingly easy and popular comedy targets. Verizon rival AT&T was Jon Stewart last year celebrated the "end of our long national nightmare" of having iPhones tethered to AT&T -- as the Apple smartphone became available on Verizon's network (curiously, the iPhone is never mentioned in the SNL Verizon skit). SNL has also gotten its jollies over Facebook, even snagging a guest appearance from CEO Mark Zuckerberg last year.

Bob Brown is a news editor for Network World, blogs about network research, and works most closely with our staff's wireless/mobile reporters. Email me at bbrown@nww.com with story tips or comments on this post.